Saturday, August 15, 2009

Roger Kimball find that Yale lied about the "unanimity" of experts recommending the cartoons not be printed. As usual, it's instructive to follow the money.

Sheila Blair, professor of Islamic and Asian art at Norma Jean Calderwood University and one of the authorities consulted by Yale about publication, said she had “strongly urged” the press to publish the images. “To deny that such images were made is to distort the historical record and to bow to the biased view of some modern zealots who would deny that others at other times and places perceived and illustrated Muhammad in different ways,” she wrote in a letter to the New York Times which is yet to be published.

So what's going on?

The story in the Times implied that in its appeal to experts the University and/or the YUP was exercising normal caution. But in fact, Professor Klausen’s book had already been throughly vetted....“I strongly suspect . . . that the threats-of-violence trope was a pretext, or at most a subsidiary concern” for Yale. What was the real reason that Yale was anxious to bowdlerize Professor Klausen’s book? Even now, I know, energetic investigative reporters are looking into Yale’s financial relationships with some of the spots where Linda Lorimer, Vice President and Secretary of the University, told Professor Klausen she has often traveled recently: Saudi Arabia, for example.

The value of the University’s endowment fell an estimated 25 percent, roughly $6 billion, between the end of June and December, University President Richard Levin announced Dec. 16.

The drop prompted the Universityto delay several planned capital projects and cap faculty and staff salary growth. But the endowment’s decline, though seemingly dramatic — the fund shrank to approximately $17 billion from $22.9 billion

Would Yale like to see a few billion roll in from the oil kingdoms? Do bears shit in the woods?